Originally Posted by
prathmell
You are quite right that their CSR's do not have a clue what their product does. They have been doing a dance around the question of whether this card will work in unmanned terminals (latest word is they won't, but I'm not buying it). Their responses to my questions have been contradictory even within the same email (e.g. at a merchant terminal that requires a PIN it will default to PIN, but at terminals that are unmanned, it won't work because "we require as signature"). I think I'm finally narrowing the issue down to: It's a Chip and Signature card with PIN capability when required. But nobody to date has given me a straight answer, they drag in non-issues like "your card has a magnetic stripe because merchants in the US....blah blah", and "we don't offer a chip-only card".
One quick sort of correction to your post. Most reports are the Pen, Andrews and State Department cards do function as advertised in unpersonneled kiosks. I'm sure there have been failures but not an overwhelming number have been reported here. The biggest problem reported here has been the automatic toll gates on some French autoroutes. But then again, that's been an ongoing problem long before this whole emv issue arose. At least that stuff is buried somewhere in here.